


Allodiastes Hydrorum

by justanotherStonyfan



Series: Hydra Trash Meme 2014 ongoing - blanket dub/non consent warnings [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Dubious Consent, Electrocution, Electrostimulation, M/M, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements, Tentacle Rape, Tentacle Sex, forced substance abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 06:35:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8787382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: After Steve and Bucky are captured, and forced to face a creature Hydra has hidden since the days of the Red Skull, Steve realizes quickly that only one of them is trying to escape.





	

  
_Allodiastes hydrorum_  
**(ˌælɵˈdīăs′tēz hīdrôrŭm)**  


Verne's terror of the deep, Melville's second enemy, Lovecraft's Dread deity, all are deep-rooted in the minds of our society's knowledge. These men's names are known for work so enigmatic it feels almost traitorous to call it fiction. And yet, shrouded in mystery, like so many things, these fictions are more - are greater and run more deeply, are sharper and more truthful - than any yellowed pages, any opium dreams.

The jewel of the throne room of an ancient myth, a spear once-used and held by many a hand of those who sought to rule the world, a gem that fell from the sky to grant wishes and heal the earth, a chest to hold stone tablets and the word of God. Even the old idols of ancient religions. All these artefacts were found, some lost again.

And those artefacts which continued to surface became of interest, those legends told and retold with common themes in different ages and different places and in different tongues all stood taller than the whispers of mythology that sank into the sands of time. A drawing on a cave wall, the scribblings of a forgotten poet, the overlooked journals of a scientist thought to be mad.

These things would not be silenced. Those who sought them for long enough could find them.

Johann Schmidt and Adolf Hitler shared a passion for occult power and teutonic myth. Hitler used these fantasies to inspire his followers but, for Schmidt, it was not fantasy.

For Schmidt, it was real.

***

_In January of 1943, in Allied territory in Greenland, a member of HYDRA discovers a cave. It is deep and black and is exactly where he has been told it will be. The young man whispers to his comrades in German that there is something unearthly here, something he feels. Something bad._

_He has been sent by his leader, who is preoccupied with the newest and most persistent of the Allied defences, to find an artefact whose very existence is nothing but myth. He has been given a map, and men, and sent away, and he has come here without question._

_The bodies, little more than bones that litter the cave as it narrows, cause him to question now, but it is too late. They must go forward. Leaving two behind to guard the cave, they enter. The cave becomes a tunnel that winds and weaves and deepens until they stands in a circular room, in the center of which is a circular dais. Beneath a shaft of blue light there is a shining silver sphere and, at its base, a golden chain and amulet._

_At first, the sphere seems to hover, floating in mid-air but as they draw closer, they come to see it does not float but is suspended inside a larger, clearer sphere, like a drop of mercury in an orb glass. It shines in the light._

_And these men cannot read Asgardian, would not know the writings for Asgardian, are not able to heed the warnings in Asgardian._

_When they take it, when the young man lifts the amulet, when he reaches for the glass sphere and finds it viscous and cold, when he closes his fingers about the silver mass and draws it back with wet, sticky sounds until he and it are free and he can stare down at it, the light vanishes._

_No, not vanished. Obscured, and the room, the tunnel and the cave begin to shake. Something moves within the shadows as they step back, faster and more furiously until they see that it is the shadows, undulating and reaching for them as stone falls from the ceilings. And so he runs. With all his men he runs._

_One falls behind him, and a second and a third, the darkness snatching at him like sharpened claws._

_When he reaches the mouth of the cave, one foot hanging at the ankle, ringed welts at skin only bared by torn clothing and his vision dimming, he holds the shining sphere and the amulet out and waits until they are pried from his fingers in the howling wind and biting cold to whisper Hail Hydra._

_The two guards leave his body and set out for home._

_Schmidt smiles as he turns the amulet in his hands beneath the lights of his study. Here lie words to rend dimensions, to call forth the spawn of a creature both vile and vicious, yet at the command of its master, the man who summons it, the man whose will is its command;_

_the man who raises it._

***

Extracts from files pertaining to the Allodiastes Hydrorum, 1943-71  
Translated from German where necessary.

_Allodiastes hydrorum, /ˌælɵˈdīăs′tēz hīdrôrŭm/, or Hydra, is a newly discovered genus of oversized mollusc, as far as we are able to determine. We have classed it as a cephalopod, although we are discovering new aspects to its existence at every turn. There is still discussion as to whether reclassification is necessary. We were divided almost equally between classifying for the molluscan or fungal characteristics, and indeed the creature displays leanings toward the floral also.  
Herr Schmidt has provided no insight into his discovery and, with the disappearance of the men on his recovery team, we have no context for the creature's existence._

\- Dr Alois Eichmann (1895-1964), High Ranking HYDRA scientist, written in his personal journal in 1943

_The hydra is beginning to show remarkable abilities insofar as showing us anything at all. We believe its physiology includes a Hunter's organ, and Sach's organ, which it appears to use to great effect with particularly aggressive prey. Cold light emission, thought to be based in luciferin somehow, is also present at certain times, and we are working towards deciphering the meaning behind it._  
Certainly, the light emissions may be based in intensity of emotion – which I am certain it experiences. Although, evidence suggests that it does not experience emotions in the firsthand – it seems to draw upon the emotions of others.  
The intensity of the emotion of subjects varies, which is beyond our control, but it does seem that the hydra focuses on emotions such as fear, anger and hunger more readily than those such as sadness. I intend to attempt to communicate with it. 

\- Dr Hartwig Hirsch (1901-1944), High Ranking HYDRA scientist, written in case files in 1944

_The hydra appears to be capable of causing changes in the human mind. We had initially thought this due entirely to telepathic connection, although it is now believed to be a largely chemical response. The hydra feeds using various methods, and neutralizes unwanted reactions, causing those that are more desirable by using a combination of chemical anaesthetic and hallucinogens. We believe the telepathic abilities are more likely to do with feeding than with interaction, triggering a chemical change preferable to its feeding habits, and a weakness that allows not only the affectation of the portion of the brain that dictates certain appetites, but also partial digestion of those soft tissues necessary for vital functions._

\- Dr Heinrich Drechsler (1918-2006), head of the HYDRA Interdimensional Research Division upon its foundation in 1950, writing in case files in 1950

_When Johann Schmidt was murdered by Captain America, the only positive outcome of which was that Captain America realized the consequences of his actions too late to save himself, it left the hydra orphaned. HYDRA has raised it almost from the moment it hatched, and it remains one of our most useful investments._

\- Dr Arnim Zola (Records of birth and death unverified), geneticist, speaking on magnetic tape to an unknown American HYDRA agent in 1971

***

When he stumbles forward, everything occurs to Steve at once. With the serum, his senses are heightened, and the darkness in here isn't quite as invasive but it's still here and he's still standing in it.

Things have led up to this but he didn't see much. Most recently came a ramp and a blindfold and a disorienting few seconds when his blindness stayed even after he clawed at the fabric over his eyes. But he didn't fall, and he isn't blind.

He doesn't speak yet, he's got nothing to say, but he can hear movement because he's wading through water which is halfway up his shins and warm enough that he's not shivering. The air in here is warm, too, almost cloying, and the suit isn't helping. It's like a butterfly house - he can feel the heat in his cheeks and between his shoulder blades. 

The movement, from whomever else is in here with him, is languid, almost calm. Slow, steady footsteps telegraphed by the slow _swish-swish_ of water tell him the other person is unconcerned, walking back and forth, pacing.

“Who are you?” Steve asks, and he's startled by the answer he receives.

Because the other person does not reply, but Steve's own voice comes back to him, odd and fading in a way that can only mean the room they are in is huge. As in, baseball stadium huge, and Steve thinks of things like the stories of cock-fights and gladiators and all the awful reasons men could have for putting him and another man in a partially flooded stadium that's beginning to smell inexplicably like old cinnamon.

His eyes adjust quickly, because the light isn't absent, it's just very low, and he still can't make out much, except that this isn't a stadium. The walls are high and straight and he loses sight of them after maybe forty feet. He's got no idea what this place is, so he turns back to the shadowy figure taking shape in his field of vision as his eyes adjust.

“Who are you?” he repeats, and he tugs at his collar with one finger, shaking his head to get a little air down the suit.

The back of his neck is prickling, and the water ripples just enough that it plays tricks on his eyes, but he can see there's another person, another man in here. What's more, Steve doesn't have his shield, his gun, the knife he's been carrying, even the shield harness. He doesn't have anything except his suit.

“What's the point of this?” he says, taking a sloshing step forward. “Why are we here?”

And in the half-light of the sweltering, stadium sized, half-flooded, cinnamon scented room, there's a flash of silver that slices an answering reflection across the surface of the water, and Steve knows who he's been put here with.

“Bucky?” he says.

Simultaneously, hope and anxiety buzz behind his eyes. Maybe this is Bucky, or maybe this is the Winter Soldier. Until Steve can figure out which one, he won't know what move to make.

Bucky doesn't answer him, just continues walking back and forth, his head down. He doesn't look concerned at all, and Steve isn't entirely sure why he's concerned himself. If Bucky wanted to kill him, he'd have started on it by now.

Unless Bucky's waiting for a signal from his higher-ups.

“Bucky, where are we?” Steve tries again, taking another step. “What is this place, why are we here?”

Bucky's steps slow, his head lifting slowly, and he turns to look straight at Steve. He stares, stares and stares with eyes that don't show comprehension, and then he turns his head.

Steve follows his gaze, thinking maybe there's something he's missed, but all he sees is the vague, hazy shine of the far wall. The really far wall.

Steve shakes his head.

“What, Buck, what do they want us to do? What are we in here for?”

“Награда,” Bucky says, and then he lowers his head and goes back to his wet pacing, _swish-swish_ in the near darkness.

Steve looks around, starts wondering about weak spots and looking for corners and he turns, walks to the nearest wall. He's still fairly close to the section where they shoved him in here, but the ramp is the only thing left to tell him where it was. There's no light around the doorway – Steve can't even see an outline – and he walks back up the ramp to be sure.

From there, he follows one wall as far as it will go, hopping down off the ramp to feel along the wall. But he walks and walks and finds a curve where the corner should be, cursing under his breath. When he looks up, he can't see any difference, and he presses against the floor underwater with his foot to find that it's just the same.

They're not in a room, they're in a bowl, and Steve doesn't exactly try to imagine why but he's a tactician, and he's only human, and he starts to wonder if that fight to the death he's worried about is going to be a race against time. If this thing fills up, there's no corner to wedge himself into, no weak point to start hitting. They're effectively tiny spiders in a giant bathtub and the hair rises on the back of his neck.

“Bucky,” he says, still gazing up at the walls for a moment or two before he turns around and starts to wade back, towards him. “Bucky!”

Bucky doesn't answer him, and doesn't look up, and doesn't stop pacing.

Steve clenches his jaw, looks upward as he wades to figure out where the light is coming from, but he can't figure that part out – there's light, enough to see by, although there probably wouldn't be without the serum. But, for all he can tell, the walls are glowing or something – there are no bright points that signal a bulb (a weakness) and no bars of light high above them to show an end or a roof or a lid to the damned thing.

If Steve hadn't been marched here by normally-sized people, he's beginning to wonder whether he wouldn't think he'd been shrunk and sealed into tupperware. 

He feels like an idiot.

“Bucky,” he says, and Bucky doesn't stop. Steve, maybe ten feet from him by now, doesn't want to get any closer in case proximity sets something off, but he leans forward in some desperate hope of making his voice carry further, even though he knows it's not that Bucky can't hear – Bucky's just ignoring him. “Bucky, we're in a giant tub in a foot of water and there's no light in here. It smells like cinnamon, for God's sakes. What the hell is going on?”

Bucky doesn't answer him, he just turns and-

-stands absolutely still.

Steve's blood chills and his spine prickles as he freezes too – whether Bucky remembers or not, freezing that quickly and that effectively is something Sergeant Barnes used to do, and it means nothing except don't move.

And even though it wasn't always bad, Steve doesn't think Bucky's spotted a deer this time, doesn't think Bucky's checking that the shadow he saw wasn't a patrol.

Steve wants to ask what the hell is wrong, but drawing attention to himself feels like the new worst plan, and Bucky is stock-still, staring at the wall he was looking at before.

Steve's eyes cut over to it, and he feels his pulse ramp up at what he sees - they're pumping something in under the water, something fluid and thick, viscous like ropes of mucus, spreading into the water. The smell of old cinnamon grows stronger and the level of the water rises just a little, a couple of inches. There must be gallons of this stuff to make such a difference to the water level so fast. He takes a step back from it as it starts coming towards him, wonders if it’s poisonous or acidic, wonders if it's meant to glue them to the floor or just to slow them down. And, when he looks up at Bucky, Bucky is standing completely still, with a smile on his face.

“Bucky,” Steve says, seems like it's all he knows how to say – it's certainly the only thing on his mind. “Bucky, we need to get out of here, do you hear me?”

Bucky's head tilts as he watches the mucous spread, with the same kind of fondness he might show a beloved pet, as though Steve didn't even exist. Again, Steve turns his head left and right, looks up and down and can't see a way out at all. He knows he won't find one but that doesn't stop him desperately hoping.

He doesn't flinch when the mucous reaches him, when a thick string of it brushes past his leg, but only because he's learned not to, only because he doesn't know what moving will do. Maybe it's friction reactive, or maybe it's semi-intelligent and doesn't know he's here, or maybe any number of things – whatever this is, he doesn't want to agitate it. It's…he can't tell for sure but it looks pinkish and it’s certainly disgusting. He swallows hard to suppress the urge to vomit. Now is not the time; he'll do it later if he has to.

He wishes he had his shield.

He stares down at the mess of it as it flows around his legs. The water rises and rises until it's just below Steve's knees, and he shakes his head, because he's going to have to do something. Maybe this is just what it looks like and they'll be okay, or maybe this is a new form of bioweapon and okay is about as far from what they'll be as possible, but either way they're both supersoldiers.

Except that Bucky isn't quite the supersoldier Steve is, and that's what spurs Steve on, what makes him speak and makes up his mind.

“Bucky,” he says, the old, musty cinnamon cloying in the back of his throat and stinging his nose, and it makes his voice rough. “Bucky, we...” His voice dies on his lips when he looks up again, because Bucky is waiting with that same fondness, his metal arm out, elegant fingers reaching toward the water's surface.

But what makes Steve's blood turn to ice in his veins is that a thick, red rope of mucous _is reaching back._

He feels the colour drain out of his face and then the flash heat of adrenaline shoots up his neck as Bucky and this limb reach towards each other and to hell with the fact that he's got no shield, it doesn't matter now.

“Bucky!”

With two steps, he gathers momentum and leaps, arms out to tackle Bucky and get him out of the way of the thing, but sharp pain screams out from his wrists and pressure has his ankles groaning as he leaves the ground. He'd land hard on his knees in the water were it not for the fact that, for a few seconds, he doesn't land at all.

By the time he hits the water, he’s figured out that this stuff has grabbed his limbs the same way it reaches out for Bucky. Still, he can’t figure out how it's causing him so much pain, and he fights against it as it tries to hold him up in the air, pulls all four limbs against it. It only hurts more, and the stuff pulls back at him as he plummets - and he feels his stomach swoop but he doesn't give in. He puts all the strength he's got into trying to yank his right hand back – when it's free, he'll be able to start clawing at the loops of it that twist around his other arm.

But it doesn't work, the pain only sharpens more, digs deeper, and he grits his teeth and hauls against it and twists, anything to make it let go.

He thought it was slime, mucous, but it's so far from that, he couldn't have been more wrong – it's thick and strong, like flexible steel, and it leaves his suit glistening like snail's trails. There's blood seeping out from where the ropes of it curl around his wrists, darkening the navy forearms of his uniform so he pulls harder, yells through his teeth, and the noise of disturbed water only spurs him on. He kicks, and he thrashes, and when he opens his eyes to look at Bucky - -

\- - His heart almost leaps out of his chest; Bucky's _smiling_ at the long, thick, slimy red limbs that are reaching up from the water – there are more of them, there are _three_ of them, and they're, _Jesus Christ!_

“Bucky!”

One is around his wrist, the other has wrapped around the lower half of Bucky's lower right leg and a third is stretching up behind him, without having yet made contact.

Steve pulls, twists again, kicks and moves, and the limbs about his arms and leg set him down, splash him to the hard floor of the room so that he's on his knees in the water. The branches, the arms, tentacles, whatever they are, pull Steve's arms out either side of him with a sensation like knives under his skin. His forearms are throbbing with so much pain it's like they're being torn to pieces beneath the stuff that restrains him, the water almost up to his hips when he's got the wherewithal to realize his lower half is underwater.

Bucky doesn't seem to register him or his predicament any more, and Steve's fingers are tingling with the pain, his feet are starting to prickle from the lack of blood that the things around his legs are causing.

“Bucky!” he says again. “Bucky, what the hell!?”

Bucky pays him no mind, smiling softly as the thing behind him, the goddamn _tentacle_ , pushes itself up under the back seam of Bucky's jacket.

Bucky turns his head and lets the one in front find his throat, makes no move except to tilt back his head and close his eyes.

“BUCK-”

White and a high ringing in his ears is all Steve knows for a second and then, when his vision returns, Steve is gasping for air, his spine on fire with pain and the hair on the back of his neck standing pricklingly, painfully upright. He feels his eyes widen as he comes to register what it must have been, as the familiarity of a localised electric shock comes back to him, and he twists as much as he can to see. There's another red, slimy limb behind him as well as the ones that bind his extremities, but this one ends in a bright white tip. He can only just see it when he looks back, but he can _feel_ the hair on his head moving when the thing sways from side to side with the lingering electricity.

“Buh,” he manages, and he swallows hard around the thickness of his tongue, blinks against the coloured lights and the stinging headache before he can try again. “Bu... cky..”

For a few seconds, his body won't respond, and even Rumlow's stun batons couldn't take his reflexes away. Steve has no idea what the hell this thing is, but he can bend iron bars; he can sure as hell tear through this.

His fingers don't stretch when he tries to wiggle them, and it takes three attempts before they move at all. And then he pulls again, launches himself forward and- -

\- - white and _pain_ and his lungs seize and he's pretty sure his heartbeat is irregular for a second or six, and he'd forgotten what it was like to feel the kind of terror that the wrong kind of rhythm in his chest could inspire. It makes his heart race once it can, makes his blood hot and his skin cold and it stops him making another move right that second.

Bucky doesn't hear him or, if he does, pays Steve's pain no mind at all. With his free hand, the flesh hand, Bucky begins to undo the straps of the leather vest that covers his body, eyes fluttering closed as one thick red limb curls upward underneath his chin, the trunk of it curving outward and back inward to press against the top of his thigh. Steve's stomach clenches. How can Bucky want this thing?

“No!” he manages, but Bucky doesn't hear.

There's a noise that Steve only knows for a moan because Bucky's lips part around it, and then there are more of them, more of the long, red limbs that stretch up from the water to cling to Bucky. Steve doesn't know what they are but Bucky holds out his arms to either side of him like the first stretch of the morning, and they come up around him and slip beneath his jacket to push it back off his body.

“BUCK-”

Rats in mazes are taught like this, Steve knows that much, and he hears his own shuddering yowl in his ears before he loses track of everything. And he's got get free of this thing, got to stop it zapping him every time he tries to make for Bucky.

Because, this time, when the white fades to spots on the edges of Steve's vision, it's been much longer. Bucky is utterly naked, and Steve's ears are ringing, his skin crackling, his head lolling forwards.

There's a string of saliva descending from his lower lip, long enough for him to see it, and it takes longer than it should to make his mouth work to stop it. His lips are tingling too, and he can feel the pressure of the white-tipped limb pressing in warning against the nape of his neck.

He can't keep his mouth closed, his jaw feels too heavy, and his eyes won't blink until five seconds after he wants them to. Hard reboot, he remembers someone saying once, and his head, his shoulders, his tendons, his whole body aches from the electricity he's pretty sure he can still feel jumping from nerve to nerve.

He doesn't mean to groan in pain but he can't help the sound of it, and his muscles tremble, his fingers twitching.

Bucky shuffles his feet out where he stands surrounded by the red limbs, lets the thickest of them curl up between his legs so that he straddles it, his half-hard cock resting along the top of it, and Steve wants to grab him, wants to pick him up and shake him and run and never look back.

There are more of them rising out of the water around Steve, too, all of them tapering to the size of a finger, some as thick as Steve is broad, some with tips that are deep red, like the ones that know Bucky, some white-tipped like the one at the nape of Steve's neck. As a huge, thick, red-tipped one strokes its tip up Bucky's spine, Steve opens his mouth to call out again.

Stinging white-tips be damned, if he can make Bucky react, if he can just get Bucky to answer to his name, or even just to say something in response to Steve's voice, then he'll have his first step towards getting them out of here.

This time, he doesn't get anything out at all.

He opens his mouth and draws a breath, and his mouth is suddenly full of what feels like a mix between wet rubber and old oyster. His stomach heaves immediately, and he tries to bite down but the stuff doesn't compact, doesn't buckle, it's just thick and slippery and solid between his teeth. Panic lights up the back of his mind as he feels the limb push backwards, toward the back of his throat, over his tongue and past his teeth, and his lips are stretched wide around it.

Cinnamon - why the hell does it taste of cinnamon? - floods his mouth and nose like glue, thick and viscous, and it makes his eyes prickle as the thing pushes past his gag reflex and wriggles against the back of his throat. He tries not to swallow, refuses to swallow, tries just to draw breath but it's not up to him now. Warmth down his gullet and in his stomach makes him jerk, trying to pull back off it, trying to get away from the invasive sweetness on his tongue and the thick red limb shoving down his throat.

He feels the consequence of failing a moment later, as languid warmth spreads through him from the back of neck outward, down his arms and into his fingers, pooling in his stomach, rolling down his legs and up into his skull.

Sedative, and it shouldn't be able to affect him but it is affecting him, it's sapping the strength from his neck and he can feel the strength of the limbs that wind around him as he starts to sag in them, head falling forward again, fingers uncurling where he'd tried to clench them into fists.

Bucky arches his back and the thick limb between his legs ripples like ferrous liquid near a magnet, going from flat as glass to covered in smooth little bumps about the size of the ball of Steve's thumb, in the space of less than a second. The thin ones that surround Bucky capture his arms and legs the way they have for Steve, except that Bucky doesn't bleed. Bucky _smiles._

“Матушка,” Bucky says on a sigh, and the tapered end of the thick, red, now-textured limb he straddles lifts and sways and curls itself in loops around Bucky's...

Steve would be sick if he had any liquid to make it back up, would throw up right now if he didn't have a tentacle shoved down his throat, and he wills himself not to take it further, not to let it do what it wants without a fight.

It curls itself around Bucky's cock, while another one, just as thick around as the first one is at the base, snakes up and around, gathering Bucky's wrists until it can draw them up behind him, pressing them in at the small of Bucky's back. And Bucky allows it, Bucky lets it secure his hands behind his back willingly.

Perhaps that's why Bucky's wrists don't bleed the way Steve's do.

They come up around him, those limbs, securing his legs and pressing his wrists to his back. Steve watches Bucky's head fall back where he stands so that his hair hangs straight down, his cock hard and pointing straight up, and Steve can't think enough to do anything when Bucky's face contorts into a frown that isn't pain, the coils of the studded limb tightening and shifting over Bucky's cock.

Another limb, light pink, stretches up towards Bucky's face, and Steve moans in desperation around the one in his own mouth, the one that feels like it's all the way down to his stomach, as he tries his damnedest to shake his head. Bucky smiles as he tips his head forward again to look at it. And then he opens his mouth and leans forward over it, and swallows this new one down with an ease that looks long-practised, and absolutely no hesitation whatsoever. It pushes deep inside of Bucky - Steve can see the distortion in his throat.

Steve pulls hard at the limbs around his wrists and ankles, and the white tip of another stinger lifts into view. He's pretty sure he’ll die if it chooses to zap him between the eyes. STRIKE have ended plenty of missions that way.

He can't fight his reflexes any longer, can't stop the contractions of the muscles in his throat any more than he can will his heart to stop. His body makes him swallow around the limb in his mouth, and only then does it withdraw, the great, long length of it sliding backwards and backwards, on and on until Steve is spluttering thick syrup down his chin. This is different - this isn't slime like the rest of them, this is coated with something made so he can stomach it, made so he can't make his body work enough to vomit it up on purpose.

He can't lift his head to look at Bucky now, either; he can only roll it on a neck that feels like jelly, and Bucky, one smooth limb in his mouth, another studded one wrapped around his cock, has his eyes half open and what would be a smile on his mouth if his mouth weren't too full for him to smile.

Something warm and soft and odd shoves up under Steve's chin – it must be another limb, there's nothing else it can be, and it lifts his head for him, just enough that all he can do is stare.

Bucky's body is a long, beautiful expanse of pale skin and smooth muscle, his cock rosy and wet at the tip, the limbs bright around it, around his wrists – metal and flesh, around his thighs, his ankles. Bucky's legs spread where he stands and Steve knows it's because those things _make_ them spread, Bucky's cock jumping in the grip of the studded limb. Bucky moans softly as the tentacle in his mouth, dark at the tip like the one that fed Steve, slips free.

The heat in the place is ramping up, or maybe it's the sedative, and Steve can feel the beginnings of a proper sweat working through the underarms of his suit. It seeps into the fabric between his shoulder blades, making the collar of the suit catch and drag on damp skin. It crawls through his hair, droplets that itch and irritate, and he raises a hand to brush them away but comes up short and he doesn't remember why he can't move.

When he frowns down at his wrist, he sees the blood, but there's no pain. It must be someone else's blood but he doesn't remember whose blood it is either.

He can't feel his hands, he can't feel his feet and his mouth feels too big, his tongue thick and his lips stinging like they do after he puts pineapple on his pizza, his eyes dry and big in their sockets.

Steve's head gets pushed up again and Bucky's mouth is open, a sound like slow laughter that Steve belatedly recognises for rhythmic response, _huah… ah… ahh…_ and he takes in Bucky's face before he remembers why. Bucky's eyebrows are drawn together, his mouth hanging open and he's surrounded by winding red ropes of flesh. Steve can see the muscles in Bucky's thighs bunching, over and over, shadows rippling across them the way Bucky's reflection ripples in the water below him, and there are strings of something, something creamy and slender, reaching up out of the water and searching like the speeded up motion of plants looking for sunlight on all the pretty nature shows Steve likes.

Steve doesn't know what these are and he doesn't know what they're doing to Bucky, even if he knows what it looks like.

All he knows is his body is slow and his hands are dripping – is it the things holding his arms? Are they what's bleeding?

Bucky moans, and moans again, and Steve stares at him, can't help but stare at the concavity of Bucky's stomach as his hips roll, as his back arches and the limbs keep him still where he stands.

The creamy things, the pale strings, thinner even than the thinnest red ones, stretch up and search, lifting themselves like tiny arms imploring, seeking something that isn't obvious until they make contact with Bucky's skin.

It only takes the first touch for them to be sure, but then they move, not quite striking but fast and certain all the same, suddenly wild and desperate. They stroke over the skin of Bucky's flanks, search his chest but retreat, and then they move together, gathering at his spine to draw back down, and down, and then Bucky's whole body seizes as they dip between his cheeks and whatever Steve felt before is nothing compared to this.

Bucky's body strains against the red limbs, spine undulating, hips not so much rolling as jerking forward and jerking back again, and a distant part of Steve knows what the things are doing to him and recognizes the flood of warmth in his blood for something that isn't drug-induced. The rest of him is terrified for Bucky, disgusted by these _things,_ as Bucky's eyes squeeze shut and his mouth drops open wide.

It's a few seconds before Bucky makes any sound and, when he does, it's a huge gulp of air and a long, low wail that Steve isn't expecting and can't help reacting to. He startles, half-horrified and half-rapt, aware of heat between his legs. It's a pressure and a feeling of fullness he doesn't quite recognize until something firm and warm presses up against it, and then pleasure, dull and aching, spreads out from his cock, down his thighs and into his stomach. It makes his nerves tingle in odd places – coarse against the back of his neck, stinging in two bright points on his chest, a prickling tightness in his thighs that he doesn't control.

The creamy strings are moving, with less enthusiasm now they've found what they were searching for, but Bucky's back bows as he throws back his head, the strings writhing like eels, and there's a flash of blue lights at the edges of Steve's vision that doesn't distract him enough to turn his head.

He hears the water moving, the splash and bubble of liquid disturbed by something in it and under it, and Bucky's fists clench so his flesh knuckles are white, the metal plates of his other arm shifting all the way up to his shoulder and back again. More of the red limbs reach up to support him, to stroke across his skin and draw back again.

Bucky's skin is flushed and shines in the low light, and it's not until the things are bending Bucky's upper body forward that Steve notices where the sound of the disturbance has come from.

It's behind Steve.

Steve can turn his head just a little now, and the thing must want him to, because the limb beneath his chin helps him do it, tilting his head up and back until he can see, out of the corner of his eye, that the limbs aren't controlling themselves; there's a huge, red mass of the same stuff rising out of the water, like a repulsive balloon, and Steve wants both to stay between it and Bucky and to grab Bucky and run for their lives. Fear and adrenalin crawl up the back of his spine, make his skin itch and his legs tremble and he hates himself for that.

He's never seen anything like it, this something from a fever dream, and the thing is enormous, takes up a quarter of the room they're in, all the limbs are attached to it – this huge, shiny red veined mass of flesh. The thing is what's doing this to Bucky, and Steve wants to run, wants to kill it, wants to save Bucky. Steve has no idea how it knows what he's thinking but it must, because the white-tipped tentacle comes back, rears up and waits until it's poised next to his head, right by his temple.

He flinches because he doesn't have the presence of mind to override the urge, squeezes his eyes shut and waits for the blinding white and the burning pain, but it doesn't come. When he dares open his eyes, it's still waiting, but does nothing, and the tentacle beneath his chin turns his head back to look at Bucky.

Steve's not sure it's possible for his heart to drop into his stomach, but it does a good impression of it, because Bucky's bent right over at the waist, his legs drawn wide. It takes Steve a moment to register that Bucky's no longer standing – his feet have been folded to the backs of his thighs so that the limbs suspend him, cock heavy and red between his legs, and the creamy little limbs spread Bucky's ass and hold Bucky's hole open wide.

It's pink and wet inside, and the tightness in Steve's thighs winds tighter, the pressure and the pleasure get worse get better and he moans when Bucky's body tries to close itself around the little creamy limbs, watching the slick, pink muscle flutter and jump, listening to the half-swallowed moan Bucky gives in return. There's another one, Steve can see it now, back up by Bucky's head, probably pumping more of the liquid into his stomach, Bucky's cock and his balls swathed in more of the sluglike, translucent red flesh. They hang dark and heavy between his spread legs, beneath his gaping hole and Steve thinks for a moment that Bucky is moving, but it's not Bucky doing the moving.

Bucky's muscles flex, but he's being held still. The limbs never stop shifting over him, even as minutely as they seem to be doing so now. Another one - how many of the damned things are there? - winds itself up around one of the ones holding Bucky up, and it's covered in smooth little bumps. Bucky's breathing gets shallow as it snakes along the inside of his thigh, teases the soft, vulnerable spot behind his balls to make Bucky's breath catch.

Steve knows where it's going, just like Bucky seems to know, seems to anticipate. It moves up, searching, and Steve's cock throbs between his legs as the limb eases into Bucky's ass – it doesn't need to ease, Bucky looks like he could take an arm right now – but it slides slow and smooth, soft little bumps and ridges catching on the rim of Bucky's hole and the little white appendages that hold it open. Bucky's toes curl hard, his fists opening and closing spasmodically, tugging against the limbs that keep his arms out of the way. His moans have changed in pitch, higher but no less desperate, an _'Unh! Unh!'_ that makes Steve's hips flinch forward the next time there's pressure at the front of his trousers.

The shock of pleasure it brings is enough to leave him dizzy, his brain buzzing, and he gasps for breath as Bucky starts to fight against the limbs holding him. Steve can't help the ache he feels in his own body just watching Bucky like this, can't help the way his own muscles clench, the way his own cock stirs.

“Bucky,” Steve manages to force past his lips, and he watches the limb sink, inch by inch, into Bucky's body, Bucky's hole just as red, swallowing it up like it was made for this. “Don't.” As though Bucky has an ounce of control over what's happening to him, as though Bucky could stop this if he wanted to. As though Bucky would want to.

For a moment, although perhaps it's longer, all the limbs in and around Bucky go still, all movement ceases. Steve can hear himself trying to breathe, can hear Bucky breathing hard in anticipation, toes curling and uncurling, flesh and metal fingers clenching and unclenching, his whole body trembling minutely either from tension or anticipation. Steve hates himself for the arousal he can't control at seeing Bucky this way; skin and muscle and so obviously pleasured. It makes Steve as sick to the stomach, almost as sick as his inability to use his strength to come to Bucky's aid or his own. He pulls weakly at the limbs that wrap around his wrists and ankles because some part of him still knows he should. There's no give, barely any movement, and the thing makes both of them wait.

“Пожалуйста,” Bucky says, his voice a half-whisper, bitten out on a desperate breath.

And then everything moves, so fast Steve's startled by it, by the sound of the water and the sudden attack of each limb in contact with Bucky and the keening noise Bucky makes in answer.

The limbs that support Bucky don't hold him tightly enough that he'd break bones if he pulled too hard, but they hold hard enough to keep him where he is, to stop him escaping from their grip and to keep him right where he needs to be when the studded limb in his ass thrusts steadily in and out, over and over. It doesn't start slow, it doesn't build up, it just moves and moves, fast and deep, and Steve can see Bucky trying to close his legs, see him throwing his head back with a broken kind of smile, one he can't keep on his face because he can't control his face.

Bucky takes huge, gulping breaths as the coils around his cock tighten and shift up and back again, just as fast as the movements of the other one, and Steve doesn't understand why but he understands this, that this is what it's doing, understands what it's trying to do.

This isn't a by-product of a process Steve doesn't recognize, this is no alien confusion, no accident or misunderstanding; this thing is trying deliberately to force Bucky into orgasm, and it looks like it's going to succeed very very soon, but Steve doesn't know why.

He tries to speak, hears his own miserable voice murmur “Bucky,” and the limbs around Bucky's legs spread him wider, the coil around his cock drawing tight, and Bucky chokes. Steve's gaze shifts to Bucky's head immediately because it sounds like there should be a limb around his neck, something that's hurting him, something that's not letting him breathe - but there's nothing. No limb around his throat, no limb in his mouth, just Bucky choking on his own desperate need to breathe, his own stilted cries.

He makes a long, loud, drawn out sound that might be “yes” in any language, might even be “yes” in Steve's own, but it turns and shifts into a half-strangled scream as Bucky's body convulses, the limbs thinning out with the tension in them as Bucky writhes in their hold, gripping Bucky tighter as orgasm wracks his body. The limbs push and pull at him, at his red and swollen cock. His cries come back flat and tinny as echoes from the faraway walls, as the thick, white stream of his release arcs down into the water.

There's a second surge of it mere seconds after the first, and the limbs wring the rest out of Bucky over the next few seconds too so that thick fluid that drips from the tip of his cock into the water below.

Bucky's cries grow quieter as the limbs around and inside him begin to slow, his breaths begin to come easier though they're deep and loud. By the time Bucky hangs limp in the grip of the limbs that still suspend him, the slowness of Steve's mind lets him understand the low, rasping sound he hears that wavers in and out, coming back at him from walls he can't see.

Bucky's _laughing._

It's soft and slow, less of a laugh and more a chuckle, a remnant of his enjoyment made audible through his satisfaction. Bucky's laughing, Bucky's pleased, and he stretches languidly in the grip of those things. They let him stretch, and then they withdraw, the coils slipping loose from around his cock, the glistening limb withdrawing from Bucky's ass to leave his thighs and his cheeks slick.

He moans softly as they leave him, smiles at them even as they retreat.

The limbs let him uncurl his legs until he can stretch them out, set him down in the water and let him stand, but they don't let him be. They don't stop, they just change what they're doing. They keep themselves wrapped around his legs, his feet wide apart, they stroke his thighs and his softening cock, rub the ribs and bumps of themselves up between his cheeks and let him unfold his arms from behind his back so they can curl up his flanks and around his torso.

They hold him up where Bucky, almost knee deep in water that looks inky black, can't yet stand by himself, and Bucky's still smiling at them, still fond, his pale skin flushed at his chest and his throat and across the bridge of his nose, his cock still red though only at half mast now.

In the back of Steve's mind, a voice he doesn't remember wants to draw Bucky like this, to keep him this way forever, just the two of them and this thing and Bucky looks so happy, so sated and at ease as he pets the limbs that curl up in front of him, strokes the ones that reach up, questing, as though he might tell them they'd been good.

“Eму,” Bucky says softly, to one of the limbs, and Steve lifts his head a little, a small spark of hope glowing dimly in the dark recesses of his blurred consciousness.

This could mean anything, might be Russian, might be a codeword, and Steve doesn't know what it is but just maybe it means something he's meant to understand. Maybe Bucky's head is a little clearer now, maybe Bucky's understanding is a little sharper now and, although Steve has no reason to think this way, no reason at all to hope these things, part of him wonders about the blank stare from the fight on and below the bridge, wonders whether there will be anything left of him in the memory of the Winter Soldier, the remnants of the brother he knew inside the man who had no idea who he was.

 _Please,_ he thinks, _please remember._

He doesn't know Bucky's word, the same way he knows none of the other words, and the sound, _yemu_ means nothing to him. But it must mean something to the creature. The limbs tighten around Steve's wrists at his sides, around his ankles underwater, winding tighter and pulling his arms back until he's tilted enough to stare up at Bucky.

“Bucky,” Steve slurs, shaking his head. “You have to...” he swallows thickly. “It's me, it's still me, you know I'm...”

But the things pull tight and leave him gasping in pain, stretched tight as though he were lying on a rack. There's nothing else he can do – there's a distant bone-deep ache in his wrists, and his feet are numb, the water still lapping at his hips as the surface undulates, not yet calm from Bucky's ordeal, however little Bucky sees it as an ordeal in the first place.

Bucky lets the limbs pet him and stroke him, lets them unwind themselves slowly and leave him to recover in his own time. It won't take Bucky long, Steve knows that much. Whatever serum Zola gave him, Bucky is strong and fast and his body is better than most other bodies. It's strong. It recovers quickly. Steve has first-hand experience of what that means.

The limbs retreat from Bucky slowly, one by one, until Bucky can stand on his own two feet in the water. And he stands like he doesn't understand what clothes are, let alone like he's missing the ones he's removed. Almost contrapposto and wholly unashamed, Bucky's a sculpture, a work of art, eyes dark and his head lifted, proud and waiting. This is a predator who enjoys the hunt, a killer who enjoys the kill, and Steve can't look away from him, can't be less than mesmerized by him, and the terrible stillness in Bucky's limbs.

Bucky is waiting for something, not that Steve wants to contemplate what that something could be, and Steve doesn't know what any of this is for, doesn't know what comes next, doesn't know what Bucky wants from him, if anything at all. He pulls against the limbs around his wrists, tries to shuffle forward on his knees, but the limbs hold him back and Bucky cocks his head, considering.

Bucky seems so tall like this and Steve's head is so heavy. He can't hold his head up alone but can't drop it either, and if the limbs are making him watch then there must be a reason, there must be.

There's movement under the water, by Steve's legs – a shift in the current and the sensation of something that shouldn't feel like a caress and he doesn't realize he's looking down to try and see it until he tries to lift his head to look at Bucky and finds that Bucky's position isn't where Steve remembers, that where Bucky stands isn't where Steve's brain expected Bucky to stand, is not where Bucky was standing a moment ago.

It's like being drunk, which Steve can still recall vaguely, or being concussed, which happened recently enough that it's no struggle to remember. He doesn't have double vision but his cheekbones feel like lead and the muscles in his underarms are aching. His chest feels tight, as though someone is trying to pull him in two and it's not until he looks at his wrist that he remembers that's true.

The way Bucky looks at him is wrong – not like a brother, not like an ally but like Steve is his prisoner, like Steve belongs to him, like Bucky has far more power than he actually must.

“We have to,” Steve says, taking a breath because the words exhaust him, “get out of here.”

Bucky tilts his head back just a little, and he's beautiful, so beautiful, before he walks forward, step by step.

It doesn't look real – this isn't wading, he doesn't struggle against the water. He just moves through it as though it's where he belongs, as though he's as used to this as he is to breathing, and he stops in front of Steve, sending the smallest waves to lap at Steve's hips. Steve can feel the water ripple even through his suit somehow, and he's starting to forget to wonder why.

Steve blinks when he looks up at Bucky, his eyelids heavy and his neck sore, head full of cotton wool. Bucky is tall and lithe, pale flesh and shining silver and, for Steve, there's no looking past the fact that Bucky's naked, that Bucky's spent cock is still a little thick, a little raised, a little red, that Bucky's skin is still smooth and flushed and glistening with sweat and the slick trails of the limbs that held him, that Bucky stares down at him with dark eyes from behind lowered lashes.

He doesn't understand the flood that brings with it, the warmth that makes the hollows under his eyes and the hollows beneath his ears tingle, the shallow tug of his sweat-soaked uniform across his back feel close and constricting. He's profoundly uncomfortable; there are sharp pains that don't feel like pain at his wrists and he can't remember eating but feels too full all the same.

Bucky waits for just a moment longer, and then he sinks onto his knees in the water before Steve, and Steve can't help watching his flesh disappear into the water inch by inch, his knees, his thighs, his cock, until Bucky's face is level with his own. The level of the water is high enough that it just covers Bucky's cock when he comes to rest, but leaves his sculpted torso bare, and it makes Steve's mouth water, tugs something forward in his chest when Bucky leans forward, tilts his head to one side and kisses Steve, one metal hand and one flesh cradling Steve's skull.

Steve's whole rational brain short-circuits, just as the rest of his brain wakes. It's like light in darkness, breath after near drowning; warmth and want and something else well up inside him and spill over into his limbs, make everything Bucky, and Steve's whole body aches for him, cries out just for Bucky to touch him.

When Bucky breaks the kiss, Steve chases his lips, has to force back tears at the loss when he finds he can't reach, but Bucky's back again a moment later, slow and hot and smooth and thorough, his tongue warm and firm against Steve's, his lips soft and dry, his hands like brands across Steve's cheeks.

Bucky's thumb sweeps a scorching path across Steve's cheekbone and Steve tries to wrap his arms around Bucky, tries to hold him in return, to slide his hands down Bucky's back and find the backs of his thighs and his ass and haul him closer, fit them together they way they're meant-

“No,” he moans as Bucky pulls away, the word broken on lips that feel tender as he tugs his anchored wrists, tries to move his anchored legs, and Bucky breathes against his lips and smiles. “Please.” And the word feels wrong in his mouth but right in his head, or maybe it's the other way around.

He isn't aware of a signal given, of something that changes, of anything that changes things in a way he can perceive, but something must, something must change, something must happen, because it isn't a shock to Bucky the way it is for Steve, when the limbs that surround him pull his limbs fit to tear them from their sockets.

This Steve understands – if what this thing did to Bucky was something Bucky wanted, maybe this is the contrast, maybe this is what Steve gets for not playing along. He doesn't want to die, not now, not before Bucky's safe, but he tries to resist the aching stretch of his limbs and can't do it, knows the last thing he will hear is the pop of his own bones from their sockets and the tearing of his own flesh, knows the last thing he will feel is burning, blinding, unimaginable agony.

“No,” he gasps, even though it's not what he's trying to say, and Bucky's hands settle against the sides of his skull, one cool and one flesh-warm. “Bucky, _please,_ Bucky...”

Steve wonders if Bucky's going to kill him, if Bucky's going to crush his skull instead. Bucky could with that metal hand, or tear out Steve's spine, and if Steve's going to die then that was as good a last word as any.

The limb between Steve's legs presses against him, up and against him with a firm, deliberate stroke, and Steve begins to get white spots on the edges of his vision, doesn't let his mouth fall open but can't help the full-body shudder. Bucky's fingertips rub at the shells of his ears and it raises goosebumps all the way down the sides of his throat, right the way down his spine, makes his eyelids flutter and his eyes roll back and he doesn't know if it's the goosebumps that make him so startlingly aware of his nipples at that precise moment, but it's a sensation he's suddenly unable to ignore, the gentle drag of their hardness against the inside of his uniform just close enough to make him try to arch his back for more friction.

He can't get it – the uniform moves with him, but Bucky knows, Bucky's always known, and Bucky's hands ease downward, stroking over his chest through the uniform. Wherever the memory comes from for Bucky – be it himself or from others, and Steve wants so desperately to think it doesn't come from others – Bucky finds his nipples through the fabric as though the fabric weren't there at all, and Steve moans as his eyes flutter shut, hips rolling upward without his say so, Bucky's hands fitting so perfectly at the top of his torso.

The limbs pull tighter, and Steve lifts his head, looks for Bucky and waits for the thing to tear him to pieces. Instead, it tugs at him, twists limbs already stretched further than he thought they could stretch. And then he's heavy, so heavy, feels the ground slip away beneath his knees and jerks in its grip as he waits for the fall, but it doesn't come. There is no fall.

He's being lifted out of the water, the water pouring off his lower legs and down, trickling into the surface as it drains from his trousers and his boots, fabric plastered to his skin. The noise of running water tapers into sparse drips and the blood rushes in his head, dizziness spinning the world about him. He's tilted, being tilted, and then Bucky is there in front of him, above him, and Bucky's metal palm slides up the length of him, from the outline of where his traitorous cock lies under his uniform, thick and heavy along the crease where his thigh meets his torso, awake but restrained. 

The limbs bring him to rest like this, on his back as though he were seated, almost lying down except that his whole body is tilted downward, with Bucky standing still and silent between his legs.

Bucky's hand moves up, over his stomach, right up to the star in the center of his chest, and _Bucky could fuck him like this._ Steve wants it, tries to reach out, but pain lances through his wrists and it might be that Bucky is naked, but Steve has never felt more exposed in his life.

Steve makes a noise, something he wanted to form a word, but it comes out only sound and he wants Bucky pressed against him, wants the freedom to reach out and touch and hold Bucky against his body the way his skin and bones have ached to do for so long.

Bucky steps forward as the thing draws Steve's legs wider, like a dentist’s chair and a doctor's table all in one.

Something supports Steve from underneath, something thick and warm against his spine that must be another limb, but almost all his weight is held by wrists and ankles and pain spikes up his arms, enough that he looks down and sees blood seeping out from beneath the limbs at his wrists, bubbling out and trickling down to drip into the water like the excess liquid still falling from his uniform, his boots.

The soft, cotton wool sensation in his skull rolls back a little way and the blood seems brighter, the pain seems sharper.

“Bucky,” he says, feels the fog recede and suddenly there's panic rising in his chest. “Buck-”

This- 

Jesus, how did he get like this? This doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense, he shouldn't be here.

“Bucky!” he says, and his throat his raw, his limbs are aching and his wrists feel like he's stuck both hands through glass and tried to yank them back. “Bucky, no, God, what is-”

Bucky drops his hand, squeezes along the length of Steve's cock through the thick material, and Steve does his utmost not to let that distract him, not to let the knowledge that this is not only someone else's fingers but Bucky's let him phase out the pain, too. That pain is something to remember, something to hold onto.

“Bucky,” he says, and Bucky ducks his head and presses his mouth to the Steve's cock through his sodden uniform. “No, no, Bucky, don't we have to-”

Bucky moves immediately, faster than Steve can follow, until he's kissing Steve, the length of their bodies pressed tightly together and it feels so good, so warm and Bucky's so close and the protests fizzle out on Steve's tongue as Bucky's own sweeps his mouth.

Bucky's hands are strong, firm, and Steve can feel everything about him, the width of his chest and the sharpness of his hipbones and the press of his half-hard cock and Steve wants it, wants him, rolls his hips against Bucky's before he realizes he doesn't want him like this.

“I...” he says as Bucky parts their mouths for a moment “... need you to...” as he pauses to suck Steve's lower lip into his mouth “... wait, Buck...”

Bucky's fingers are deft and strong and Steve thinks for a moment that Bucky understands, that Bucky's searching for a way to help him.

Bucky draws back enough to stare into his eyes, and Steve thinks he sees a flicker of recognition in them.

“Help,” he whispers, trying to beg with his eyes and voice alone and, slowly, Bucky nods.

And then he presses a gentle kiss to Steve's forehead, and begins to fumble with the clasps on at the neck of Steve's uniform.

Despite the heat and the itching beneath his skin, Steve feels a chill sweep him. He opens his mouth to say something, to correct himself, to tell Bucky _no, that's not what I-_ but his open mouth is full of tough, rubbery limb a moment later and it's so far back that he tries to retch, tries to force it out and it's no good. He can feel the damn thing all the way to his stomach.

He tries to moan around it, eyes prickling as he chokes – he can't breathe and maybe that's the point, maybe he's struggled too much and the thing has had enough and decided he's not worth the effort.

His soft palate hurts, then tingles, something floods his mouth with a metal tang and there's a crackling in his ears as though he needs to yawn at altitude, making the sloshing water muffled for a few moments too long.

When it draws out of him, it eases gently, slimy cinnamon mucous on his tongue and in his throat and he coughs but it sticks. Maybe it's closing his airway up and stopping him getting the oxygen he needs because he feels like a blunted knife.

“Help, Bucky,” he says, and his tongue feels strange, the inside of his mouth feels strange, the words don't sound the way they should and his voice is slow. The dull ache in his wrists is slipping back into pressure, a feeling like sparkling cotton wool spreading slowly from behind his left eyebrow, like burning sawdust and grains of rice slipping through his fingers.

Bucky's hands are at Steve's stomach, tugging at the clasps that keep the overjacket closed, and Steve knows, he knows this is process, there is a limit, knows there's something he has to do before the rest of his clothes follow because he's running out of time, even if he doesn't know what that means.

Bucky's hands open Steve's overjacket and fold it back, fold back the star and the stripes, so that the fabric hangs down either side of Steve, the lowest seams heavy with water. Bucky can't get the overjacket down Steve's arms all the way, but his chest and stomach aren't covered quite so much any more. There's the jacket next, and it used to be that there'd be safety gear beneath but there's been a para-armarid synthetic fiber resolution and it's all built in – why can he remember this and not why he's let himself stay clothed so long is a mystery, like the part of him that remembers nebulea and paperclips but doesn't remember why he wanted this to stop.

Bucky's hands – hand – is warm but the other is cooler, and he works his way up this time, from the clasps at Steve's belt to the one at his navel, to the one next up, to the next and Bucky's at his chest before Steve thinks to fight him.

“Stop it,” he says but his eyes close and his head tilts back and Bucky's fingers are so strong and Steve's skin aches for this, Steve's bones cry for it.

The clasps sit at his flank in asymmetry, one fewer point of vulnerability in the design, but Bucky knows, Steve doesn't know how. When he reaches Steve's chest, up toward his shoulder, Bucky kisses him and Bucky tastes of something other – something that isn't metal and isn't flesh, something warm and spiced.

Steve moans into his mouth, tries to speak and breaks the kiss by accident instead.

Bucky's metal hand grabs his jaw and holds him still while Bucky kisses him like he's trying to suffocate him – a reprimand for breaking their kiss before - but it's good, _so good_ and Steve just opens his mouth as his fingers uncurl with the memory of a pressure he can't feel.

He can't feel his hands at all, but he can feel Bucky's, as Bucky sweeps Steve's torso with his palm and pushes the jacket open, as Bucky rucks up the undershirt with his clever fingers and-

Steve throws his head back as the sound punches out of his chest, hips rolling upward against Bucky, body straining to reach as his back arches. Bucky's hand is warm, his fingertips soft over Steve's skin, and Steve could weep for how good this feels – like the sun rising over the mountains or the lights in the cold, dark distance – it's a relief, a promise that he's almost there, that the ordeal is almost over.

He'll have what he wants soon, he knows it.

Bucky stands, draws away from him and looks down, and Steve looks down at himself, too. If he can see the problem, perhaps he can rectify it. He sees his chest and stomach bared, but only his chest and stomach. His jackets and undershirt still cling to his shoulders, still cover his arms, and the belt traps the trousers completely.

He tries to reach down, to shift, to get the fabric off his arms himself but he can't move and, when he looks down at his wrists, there's something thick and red wrapped around them.

Bucky kisses him again and there's a sharp, squeezing pain near Steve's shoulder, a shift as one is lifted as though in a sling, before the fabric tears and one sleeve begins to rend in Bucky's hands – one hand of flesh, one metal.

Steve's uniform is a problem that can be solved, then, and Steve watches the fibres come apart inch by inch, fraying and splitting all the way down to the red ropes that circle his wrists and the red and purple that seeps out from under it. He flexes his fingers and it's strange because he sees them move but doesn't feel the liquid running down them, doesn't feel the creases in his flesh where his fingers bend.

Bucky's hands are at his other sleeve, tear it open as though it was made of wet paper, and he watches, fascinated, as the white pressure marks on his own skin fade before his eyes. It's almost enough to arrest his attention when Bucky breaks the small, only remaining straps at his throat.

“Bucky,” he says, smiling a little, content just to have the word in his mouth again, and Bucky kisses him again, soft and slow and sweet this time, he tastes of skin and spice, and the metal tang in Steve's mouth with Bucky's name seems to fit them both perfectly.

Steve's belt is easy – one huge metal clip that un-clicks with a soft, high sound and slides away a little with gravity, stopped by the empty holster that catches on his belt loops-

_Empty holster?_

-Bucky's hand is cool over his chest, the ridges of the metal plates sliding and catching over his right nipple – it hurts in a way that has him gasping and twitching upward toward it, hurts in a way that's nothing at all like any kind of pain Steve's used to.

“Shh,” Bucky says kindly against Steve's mouth as he leans upward, the first thing he's said that might be English so far, that hasn't been just a sound forced from his lips, and Steve's not sure of the smile on Bucky's lips or whatever expression is in his eyes.

But the smile, at least, is gentle and not quite so hollow, and Steve knows that face, knows this smile. Steve's jacket and underjacket connect to the trousers, like a jumpsuit, but the whole upper half hangs from Steve's waist in shreds and he's sure the rest will follow soon.

Bucky's palms cup his skull, stroke down his throat and over his chest, and Steve lifts his hips when Bucky's palms reach them, helping the only way he can like this. The clasps bend and break, giving way to Bucky's strong, clever fingers, the Velcro rasps and the button spirals off and disappears out of his field of vision. He never hears it land, and doesn't even care where it went.

He bites his lip, can't help it, as a fresh wave of warmth sweeps downwards.

“Bucky,” he says again, can't think of a reason to say any other word, isn't sure there are other words to remember when this one shines like gold on his tongue, and Bucky's eyes find his own as he turns his hand to an angle that ought to be awkward, and slips his metal fingers under the fabric of the waistband of Steve's shorts and begins to tear the fabric.

They barely graze the hot skin of Steve's cock but it's almost too much immediately, almost enough that he flinches away. Instead, he moans like it could turn him inside out, like it could open his whole body to Bucky's touch, and part of him wonders if it would be so bad if Bucky could crawl into him and never leave.

“Soon,” Bucky says, his voice strange and lilting, stilted, in a way Steve doesn't recall. “Very soon.”

The vowels are clipped and he rolls the 'r' and Steve doesn't care because it's Bucky's voice and Bucky's hands even if the shape of each word is unfamiliar, even if the hands are in places they don't know so can't remember. Bucky eases Steve's cock free, tugging at the thick length until he can push at the fabric of Steve's underwear, easing the cotton down until it won't catch when he pulls it all the way. Steve's body is longer and broader than he remembers when he looks down at himself, but it looks so strong and Bucky, Bucky-

Something catches at his wrist, like a tingle or a flicker and the sensation of it runs all the way up his arm to his shoulder. The red there-

He's bleeding, his wrists are bleeding-

“Buck-” and then his whole body seizes, muscles cramping so tight it hurts all over, heart stuttering beneath his sternum.

It's enough to make fear bubble up in his chest, enough to have him gasping, to have spots dancing before his eyes and pain throbbing in his skull, and he doesn't know his mouth hangs open until something's pushing into it.

“No!” he tries to say, but it would come out slurred if the thing weren't already down his throat.

 _Why?_ part of him asks, _why does this keep happening? Isn't once enough?_ but the pale tip of the limb that shocked him, that pale and wilting stinger, is still close enough that he can see it, and Bucky presses a gentle kiss to his temple.

“Stop fighting,” he says, Bucky's voice but not Bucky's words, and Steve shuts his eyes, squeezes them shut.

He feels so full, so heavy with this, his stomach feels compacted and he doesn't know how to make it stop.

“Hhnnngh,” he moans around the limb in his mouth, throat working hard to expel it and managing nothing at all – it makes sense slowly, like treacle pouring into his head. Every time he comes back to himself, every time he becomes aware of this properly.

Somehow, the thing knows when he's starting to shake off the stupor.

Bucky's hands are firm but careful when they begin to tear at the seams down his thighs where the fabric is weakest, where red stripes meet blue swathes, and he can hear it tearing, shuts his eyes to try and block it out, but the stupor feels like warm water as it comes up around him, floods up over his skin.

This time, he knows exactly what's happening, but there still isn't a damn thing he can do to stop it.

When it draws free of his mouth this time, his stomach wrenches, but it feels like a dream, feels like what he remembers of being drunk – like everything's happened too quickly for him to keep up and his body and mind lag behind the rest of the world. He can look down, he can see his own ankles and the obscene spread of his body, the hard jut of his own cock bobbing with every movement, the tattered shreds of his underwear hanging, frayed, from Bucky's metal fingers.

How the hell did they get this far. Why are his clothes in pieces?

Bucky stoops by his legs and the thick, heavy pressure at his ankles moves, envelopes more of his legs, shifts away from his shins and ankles and it's not until the pressure Steve hasn't even noticed there begins to ease that he understands why.

Bucky's untying his shoelaces, and the slow, tugging pull of it as he removes Steve's right boot is worse, somehow, than his jacket, worse than the gentleness with which he pressed their mouths together. This is caring, this is something Steve knows he's actually done before – on days when the cold made every joint stiff and every extremity numb, or the nights when bending to reach his own feet made him too dizzy. Bucky has done this before, with the same care and attention, and Steve half-wishes for that now, to be back in his apartment with that warm smile, that childhood friend who only knows enough now to quiet him.

It hurts, in a way he can't describe, and he wants to reach out to touch, to make sure Bucky is really whole and breathing, to make sure what he's seeing is real, but he comes up short and gets nowhere when he pulls his wrists.

There's nothing else between them now, and part of Steve knows this isn't how it should be.

“Bucky,” he says, pitiful, his voice rough and thick, and Bucky shakes his head, grasps Steve's ankle with one hand and steps up against him, leans down against him, to kiss him.

This, this is better, this is closer to some other hurt, and he forgets the first in favor of the heat of Bucky's skin, the warmth of Bucky's whole body pressed up against his own. His cock, hard and heavy, fits so neatly against Bucky's hip, Bucky's warm skin soothing the ache of it for a moment, for a while.

Steve tries to shift, tries to roll his aching hardness upward, and Bucky keeps blessedly still, the friction between them lessened by slick fluid, sending a rolling coil of pleasure up Steve's body, stinging at his inner thighs with the effort to keep still.

Bucky kisses him as though they were both drowning, as though to breathe the life back into him, and his hands in Steve's hair hold Steve's head, cradling Steve's skull like a precious thing. Steve's eyes are closed but he can't move away, feels terror for the moment Bucky lets go of him, never wants to be without this again.

Bucky tastes of metal and earth and old cinnamon, and Steve's hips judder forward and back, just a little, just enough.

But it can't last.

Bucky breaks away from him, nuzzles his cheek and then his throat, and Steve's mouth is open but he doesn't feel words if there are any. Steve's eyes are closed but he's not afraid of the dark as long as Bucky's there – but then Bucky's drawing away from him, leaving him cold and grieving.

“Bucky,” he says, and the word makes his chest hurt and his eyes sting, comes out like a moan instead of a word.

“Shhh,” Bucky answers, long and slow, to soothe, settling his hand on the heavy curve of Steve's cock.

There is bright red at Bucky's waist, curving around his body like a slice of blood and entrails, and Steve's panic rises more quickly than he ever thought possible – he just got this back, he can't lose Bucky again – but it moves by itself, and Steve recognises the limb for what it is. Not an injury, not blood, not something terrifying, and his heart thuds strong and fast in his chest, his throat, his wrists-

\- the limb curves around Bucky, stroking at him, over his stomach and the scars at his shoulder and his nipples, around his wrists like they wind around Steve's, and Steve looks at his wrists and turns them, smiles when the limbs won't give way.

He's safe like this, held fast like this, and that's all he's ever really wanted from them, isn't it?

The limb that circles Bucky lets him be a moment later, reaches toward Steve instead, and Steve can't reach for it in return, can't take it and draw it closer the way he wants to do. For a moment, he feels something twist inside him at this, and the sting in his eyes returns. What if it changes its mind? What if it never comes closer than this?

He hears a sound that's small, desperate, and doesn't know if he's the one who made it, but the limb comes closer, like the one that fed him, almost like it could see him better just by moving. It's dark and red, glistening in the low light, and bulges at the tip, like a flower, like a closed tulip. The outside seems smooth, but there are bumps, little bumps, like snow over rocks, like skin over stones, and it curls and uncurls as it watches him in return.

“Be still,” Bucky tells him, one hand still at his ankle, and Steve tries his best as the limb settles against his chest, coils over his heart and unfurls across his collarbones.

It slides down, seems to make a game of it, searching him and pushing at his skin. Steve watches it, fascinated by it, sees it curl at one nipple before the heat of arousal floods his system and his head falls back, a great heaving breath only pushing him closer to it. It isn't long before it moves, edging downward, and he whines when it strokes at the crease between thigh and torso, tries to twist, to encourage it closer to the part of him that feels most neglected.

Bucky lets go of his ankle and Steve watches Bucky's fingers uncurl, watches the shape of him move until he's gone, missing him immediately. Then the red limb, darker at the tulip-tip, is nuzzling at his cock, stroking at it - Steve isn't sure what to call something like this. And it strokes the length, dips and curls and Steve hears the echo of the moan he gives come back to him from the walls as the curls around his cock, loose at first as though it were merely Bucky's fingers, as though his cock merely rested in its coils.

It draws tighter slowly, winds and winds until his cock is near to covered, and his mouth falls open, his eyebrows furrowed as he watches and tries to breathe, inch by slow inch until only the head is still bared.

When the limb pulls tight, draws tighter than his fist could ever be, Steve's body shudders with it, his spine snaps back and his legs would kick had they anywhere at all to go. His head, thrown back without him ever meaning to do it, swims and feels so heavy, but his legs, his arms, push out if only to try and bring him closer to it.

It's slick and warm and tight and _good_ , better than anything he's ever felt before, and it shifts around him, drawing a sharp cry from his lips, tugs up and eases back, and Steve's whole body follows it, hips rolling up toward it as his spine bows.

“Khorosho,” Bucky murmurs, _good_ it means, and Steve doesn't know how he knows, doesn't know that he knows, just accepts that Bucky's said it and means it for him.

The coils don't move as much as they could, and there's a sound under Steve's skin like humming, like singing, like blue fire and a razor's edge. It hurts but it hurts so deeply and so cleanly that it can't be a hurt at all.

There are more of them, these limbs, thick and red; they rise slowly and wait for him, reach out for him, and Bucky watches with a light in his eyes that Steve recalls from distant memory, an affection Steve has seen before but can't remember why any more.

The limbs wind around his legs and arms, reach up from underneath him to hold his head like Bucky held him, around him to stroke at skin that feels hot and cold at the same time, and he wants more of this, wants to push against them and seek them out.

He's held fast, _held safe_ but wants more, needs them and Bucky closer, and closer still. It's not enough that Bucky's here if Bucky can't be under his skin.

“Please,” he says, and his throat, like cobblestones, sounds dry and injured, but it doesn't hurt to speak, not like this.

If it's Bucky that gives a signal, Steve doesn't see him give it but suddenly the coils are tight around his cock and pulling fast and hard.

Steve moans because he can't keep it back, can't close his mouth in time or stop the desperate gasp for air of his lungs. It's loud and pitiful in his own ears when it's forced out of his open mouth, a wrench of all the muscles in his abdomen and release at the back of his throat. He can't stop any of the sounds, any of the limbs, trying to keep from calling out with each stroke of the coiled limb around his cock. It's tight and slick and he can feel each raised rib and bump in the flesh of it, his nerves juddering as it tugs and tugs, a painful vice around his balls each time they start to tighten against his body. It’s a clever ruse just to draw the whole thing out, each nub and rib drawing tracks of burning pleasure in their wake.

His forehead aches, there's an ache at the hinge of his jaw, and he can barely breathe between the noises he makes enough to have air for them. He kicks out, to dislodge it or bring it closer, he can't tell any more, and the thing just accommodates it, lets him waste the energy and brings his legs back to where they were held before. He struggles harder as the fire in his blood grows stronger, and the limb at the back of his neck forces his head up to look down the length of his own body.

His torso glitters in the low light, just as Bucky's did before, his nipples dark and red, his stomach flat and tense, and the head of his cock, the only part of it visible past the shining red coils, is dark and swollen, glistening too. The tip of the tulip-tipped limb is soft, and the softly pointed head, with its raised little polyps, is settled at his frenulum, where it rubs back and forth.

He feels his jaw judder down because he can't open his mouth any further, hears the shuddering breath that rattles his bones, and his cock feels full fit to burst, the skin tight, each stroke halfway between stinging pain and the kind of pleasure he's never felt anything close to. He shouldn't be staring at it, he should be fighting against it _he shouldn't fight against it_ but it's fascinating and it's so good and seeing it happening as he feels it makes it ten times stronger.

“I,” he says, first on a breath in and then on the next moan out, “I… _can't!_ ”

And the coils tighten, pull harder, all of Steve's weight held aloft somehow by this thing - he twists and they follow, pull him back so that he might as well be strapped down for all the leverage he can get. His fists open and close, his toes curled so tight that the knuckles in them are colourless, and he sees more limbs rise from the water by his feet, thin and red and tulip-tipped like the one that teases the exposed head of his cock like velvet sandpaper.

He grits his teeth, then groans through them, tries his utmost not to scream through them, and his eyes fall closed until the sound of water stirring makes him force them open and look down. The sound he makes might be no! but he's not aware enough to follow his own train of thought any more.

Each of the tulip-heads peels open, like blooming flowers, yawning pink flowers one by one, and the insides are darker, pinker, like lilies in their structure, covered in hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny, tiny polyps, like the fronds of a sea anemone, waving about as though they were underwater in a vicious current. What makes the breath catch in his chest is the things in the centres, the little white stamen that lengthen and lengthen, the same little white strings from before and Steve shakes his head and tightens every muscle he can. It doesn't stop them. They reach up and then toward him, flickering over his inner thighs and his balls, and he knows what they're searching for, knows something is wrong about this.

Like questing fingertips, they dip between his cheeks and stroke over his hole, writhing about and lighting nerves Steve didn't know could be lit, and he arches his back to get away from them, _don't try to get away from them,_ tries to clench down to keep them out but it doesn't work – it only dips his pelvis downward and his muscles are strained enough, he can't keep them out forever.

The first press of one is small and feels strong in a way he can only categorise as bright or sharp, a sudden sensation in a part of him that's never had this kind of stimulation. He doesn't know what the difference is, how these can be more, can be stronger, how these little white strings can make his body feel so _much_ , but a second joins the first and slips inside, and he throws his head back and tries to breathe, tries to swallow the sound that comes out through his nose instead.

His mouth should be dry but is full of the metal taste instead, and he kicks out again, the movement made languid by the restriction of the limbs around his legs.

His breath sticks in the back of his throat, the muscles in his abdomen drawing tight again, but he can't stop, can't relax his body, can't alleviate the pleasure that's causing the pain sitting low and hot on his periphery of his recognition. More strings must join the first two, he feels them all writhing inside, deep and strong and it only makes his cock harder, only makes the pleasure bite deeper.

He looks down as they pull at him though he can't see them from this angle, stretching him like they stretched Bucky, and he tries to clench down but they hold his hole open anyway with a flutter of pleasure as his muscles try to tighten and are stopped. They move, stroking and pulsing and stimulating everything they touch even as his body fights to stop them – Steve knows what comes next.

His cock drips onto his stomach, coils shifting up and back and up and back, and he can feel his muscles tremble, can see the tremor in his thighs but the next limb that rises up in front of him isn't like the one that impaled Bucky, isn't like the ones that surround his arms and legs, isn't dark red and tulip-tipped. This one is white, and Steve feels his eyes go wide even as he tries desperately to rear away from it.

No, no, he's been good, he hasn't had the leverage to do anything that would warrant punishment!

But the white-tipped limb lifts itself up, curls and uncurls, and Steve shakes his head, feels terror like a hard ball of ice in his stomach, like a rolling coil of metal in the back of his throat, and Bucky's metal hand covers his mouth to stop him speaking, to stop him objecting.

“Mmh!” he says, pulling at the limbs that bind his wrists, trying in vain to close his legs and shield himself any way he can.

There's no moving from this, no way to get away from what he knows is a weapon and he knows where it's going, knows he's going to end up with this thing _inside_ him and part of him is horrified by the thought that it could kill him like this, he could die impaled on the equivalent of an electric eel, and part of him just really really doesn't want something that could hurt so much in a place that's so easily damaged.

It waits, of course it waits, and Steve wills his body to be stronger than this thing, wills his muscles to fight harder against the little strings that hold him ready and he shakes his head, Bucky's palm cold and dry over his mouth, tries to turn his head and find Bucky's gaze with his own, but Bucky's metal fingers squeeze tight enough that Steve knows he's lucky his jaw is still whole.

The limbs around Steve's legs draw tight and pull outwards, go rigid, like steel sheathed by silicone, and his legs are spread beyond his ability to close them, almost beyond his ability to have them held them where they are, and he stares at the white tipped limb as it curls up between his legs, his cock cocooned by the red ones with the swollen, purpling head still weeping.

And then the white tipped limb surges forward and pushes in, past the tight ring and his soft inside and it's a hot, textured drag into his body that sinks deep and thick inside of him, dragging pleasure behind it like a rock into a lake, rippling out so that his legs shake first and then his arms, and he moans hard enough that the metal of Bucky's palm heats over his lips.

It's deep and smooth but it's the kind of smooth that's covered in little bumps, and Steve can feel every single one catching on the rim of his hole, a jolt of pleasure curling up behind his cock with each, and he'd think he'd come were it not for the fact that his cock is still aching hard and leaking a thick stream of precome over his stomach and the coils.

It drives into him, over and over, like he saw it do with Bucky, and each thrust of it bows his body back, forces tightness in muscles that are trying desperately to make his body reach its peak. He'd keen if he could, but Bucky's hand muffles the sound, and the limbs keep him still. For how much of his body feels exposed he can barely move at all, and the limbs pull his legs a little wider, lift them higher.

He tries to speak, to ask for help, just to say Bucky's name in the hopes that he'll understand, but there's a flash of white light behind his eyelids and the type of sensation that burns down his thighs and up into his stomach, and his whole body convulses, seizing rigid for a second, maybe more. It's pain and pleasure both, bright and hard like the rush of adrenalin after a punch taken, with the warm satisfaction of one thrown.

There's blue at the edges of his vision, deep and long in the darkness around them, and Steve can't breathe enough through his nose, Steve can't do this, his body can't take this. It's so good, it feels so good and he knows he's crying, can feel the tears sliding down his temples, crawling into his hair and itching their way to the back of his skull, drawing lines around his head.

The flash of white comes again, stronger this time, the muscles in his legs jumping and his heart stutters in his chest and he suddenly understands, suddenly recognizes the stutter and the pain. This limb, this white-tipped limb-

More of the white flash behind his eyes and Steve moans, his body shuddering like his heart and his lungs, he's been good, he's done nothing to warrant punishment and _this isn't punishment._

There's a crackle of it, a lightning strike of it that he can feel dissipating into his muscles, and the thing pushes up and curls inside of him, finding the part of him that forces a cry from his lips with every jolt of electricity. Bucky's face is blue, like moonlight or glow worms and Steve's eyes are drawn to the flashes of skittering blue across the skin of the creature – under the water where he can see the travelling blue like fireflies, down the spiral of the limb around his cock.

Bucky lets him go, leaves his mouth free and Steve gasps, cries out into the glittering dark. The sound he makes isn't Bucky's name though he tries his hardest to make it be, his body alive with it, alive with something it shouldn't be capable of feeling. Steve's skin is crawling like it's trying to slough off his bones, the want and need a tight, burning ache in the hollows between the bones in his thighs, a rising swell he's sure his limbs won't contain.

The tulip-headed limb that rubs back and forth at his frenulum rears back and shakes, peels open like the others did before it, little pink fronds shifting, little white strings wavering outward, and Steve shakes his head, knows somehow in the seconds before it happens just what this thing aims to do.

When it drives the little white strings into the head of his cock, it's like a striking cobra, fast and perfect, and he can't make the sound, paralysed by the pleasure-pain of it. He can feel it, feel the length of it shoving down into him, flickering and twisting inside his cock until the next flash of white seems to meet it like a closing circuit, to touch deep inside of his body where he can't get away from them, and the leaves of the open head, the tongues and their million little swaying polyps, sink too until the tulip head of it closes over the head of his cock and writhes, a million tiny pinpoints writhing against skin that feels ready to split with the pleasure of it. Steve writhes too, in its arms where he's safe, with Bucky beside him _on the floor of his apartment,_ and Steve can't, chokes on a sob as he shakes his head.

He's almost certain that this is going to kill him, after everything – this pleasure will be what even a body like his can't sustain for much longer. It's like nothing he's ever felt, even if his basis for comparison is so pitifully small. Nothing he remembers compares in any way at all to this - this doesn't build like the kind of pleasure he knows, doesn't stir and wake, doesn't begin and wind itself higher. This is immediate and all-consuming, screaming into life to attack him all at once. He doesn't get the chance to draw breath, cannot stop the sudden snap tight of every muscle in his body and he keens before he can stop it.

There's a moment when everything is perfectly, startlingly clear, a moment when all of the building pleasure disappears and he's left in the void of still blackness. Like the breath before a shout or the rush inward of atmosphere before the blinding explosion as his legs shudder outward and his heart jump in his chest.

And then he cries open-mouthed into the darkness of the chamber as he comes, the driving, pulsing clench of the muscles in his balls and his cock forcing it out of him and the broken-glass drag of it through his veins - he doesn't see the string in his cock withdraw, but he feels it, the wrench of it leaving him and the rolling tide of his semen hot on its heels of it.

It goes on and goes on and there's silence between his first cry and the time it takes his lungs to work to draw in the next breath before he can cry out again, each pulse like a punch and every spurt of it hot and thick against his chest.

It won't stop, it won't stop and he bites down hard and his face stings, his head sings with pain, and the next cry is half a sob, a pathetic broken thing that hurts his stomach and his chest and his throat and his head and it's like fire between his legs, like something he's not meant to know, a moment so incredible that he's not meant to survive. He expects to die, can feel his whole body shaking but it's so distant and it feels so good.

It doesn't stop so much as his body gives up, can't continue with it, until Steve can draw huge, gulping breaths, until his legs are shaking and chest is hitching and his face twitches in places, beyond his ability to stop. The muscles in his jaw jump, the corner of his mouth ticks, his eyelids don't work properly. It feels like his face is a million different things over which he has no control, feels like a weight has been lifted off his chest as the creature allows his legs to unfold, and he can feel his inner thighs trembling with fatigue, fingers and calves cramping, hip joints aching sharp and bright having spent so long pushing and pulling against the immovable limbs of this creature, but it doesn't stop, it doesn't die away.

His skin is fever hot, dripping with sweat in the muggy heat, his face wet with tears, and the thing cradles him, lets him unfold until he's all but lying in the limbs' embrace, and lowers him until he's sinking into water lit by flashes of skittering blue, body settled into slick flesh so that his head is clear of the surface – so that he can't drown as the water comes up around him, a broken sound leaving his lips as it does.

He wants the thing to let go, wants to curl up and press his hands to his own skin to be sure it's still there, to let the water swallow him up and soothe each hurt and quell the lingering sensation. His body thrums with the aftermath of it, the crooks of his arms and legs slippery with sweat, the muscles over his diaphragm hard and aching, his cock still swollen and tender and not just because it's not fully soft yet.

He can't help the moan of relief as the water crawls up around him, as he's lowered into it and it rises up between his legs and between his fingers and up at the sides of his torso, up over his poor, inflamed flesh, cool against the rawness except for where his cock is still exposed to air. He wishes the water level higher, wants it to cover all of him, but his cock, still twitching, is left curved in the warm air around them even while the rest of him is submerged.

The water laps at his skin, and he can't help that his eyes slip closed, can't help that his nerves are frayed and his flesh is weak.

Something pushes at his mouth, something more slender, something less invasive and more searching. He doesn't mean to let it in but it tastes sweet, like old cinnamon, and feels like kissing might feel without another mouth against his. He swallows without thinking at the sweetness on his tongue, again when there's more of it, and then there is kissing, and that tastes different. It's not cinnamon, it's something he knows, recognises but can't place.

Cool fingers soothe his neck, stroke sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and settle him back _into the pillows when he's kissed, leaving the sheets unfolded around him_ and he's shaking even as he reaches for Bucky, but something won't let them touch.

He can't speak, can't say Bucky's name and _Bucky leans down over him, settles beside him to kiss him better, one metal hand in Steve's hair, the other stroking his prominent ribs as though he couldn't see the weakness in them. This isn't asthma but it's not panic and his body still hums with the need for more of it. He wants more of this, more of Bucky._

The roof of his mouth stings, a fizzing headache in the centre of his skull that spreads and sparkles and takes him away with it.

_He feels himself sinking, thick and inescapable, warm and sweet and the cinnamon molasses that encases him is only penetrated by the sunlight that shines in through their apartment window, a bright swathe of warm gold that paints him and Bucky both._

_Bucky's mouth is warm against his throat, and his tongue is warm and sweet in Steve's mouth and gentle against his chest and Bucky's clever hands, too, are at his wrists to keep him still (he'd never manage to be still otherwise) and at his legs to ease his restlessness and stroking up his flank as they cradle his head._

_And, with Bucky at his back and settled snug and right between his legs, wrapped around him to keep him safe and staring down at him, Steve's whole body is shine warm, Brooklyn sweet, soft, old, familiar--_

Like a snapped tendon, Steve is in agony and blackness and his body won't move and his words won't come – he can't move his mouth though there's nothing in it now and his brain is burning, he can feel it, and Bucky is twitching next to him-

_-shuddering over him-_

-moaning in pain-

_-soft and sweet in Steve's ear and reaching out for more and-_

-the creature reaches back-

_-and Bucky pulls Steve down again into the safety of his seven arms and the warmth of a bed lit by the low,_

_early hush evening,_

_warm quiet_

_Bucky_

_safe._


End file.
